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Movies about ALS


Choose one of the below movies for your next viewing party. Other movies you think should be on the list? Email us to let us know!

Insights to Light the Way

“I have always considered myself a student of life, embracing challenge to the best of my ability as an opportunity to learn and grow. The greater the challenge the greater the opportunity, and an experience of living with ALS has been an incredible catalyst for change in my life. This book is a distillation of those insights and ideas that have had the most powerful impact on who I am as a person and how I walk in this world. This book feels like such a perfect representation of who I am.” – Ryan Farnsworth

GRATEFUL

A courageous young woman debilitated by ALS sees beauty and humor in life…And keeps moving forward

The Pride of the Yankees

The life of Yankee baseball great Lou Gehrig known as the ‘Iron Horse’ from his childhood, through his baseball career, battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to his final tribute where he declared that he was “the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” Rpundly cited for a lack of realistic baseball scenes and the Cary Coopers lack of athletic ability. Cooper was righthanded and Gehrig was lefthanded. When the filmed the baseball action scenes they reversed the film.

Augie

Armed with irreverent humor and a boundless love of life, paralysis has done little to slow down Augie Nieto, the genius visionary and founder of LifeFitness, who channeled his entrepreneur spirit towards finding a cure for ALS.

Gleason

At the age of 34, Steve Gleason, former NFL defensive back and New Orleans hero, was diagnosed with ALS. Doctors gave him two to five years to live. So that is what Steve chose to do: live. This film incorporates personal video journals from Gleason for his then-unborn son to footage of his adventures undertaken as part of his mission to live his life to the fullest.

Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection

Lead Belly is “the hard name of a harder man,” said Woody Guthrie of his friend and fellow American music icon who was born Huddie Ledbetter (c. 1888–1949). From the swamplands of Louisiana, the prisons of Texas, and the streets of New York City, Lead Belly and his music became cornerstones of American folk music and touchstones of African American cultural legacy. With his 12-string Stella guitar, he sang out a cornucopia of songs that included his classics “The Midnight Special,” “Irene,” “The Bourgeois Blues,” and many more, which in turn have been covered by musical notables such as the Beach Boys, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Van Morrison, Nirvana, Odetta, Little Richard, Pete Seeger, Frank Sinatra and Tom Waits. Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection brings us the story of the man as well as the musician. 5 Discs, 108 tracks (16 unreleased), 5 hours of music, historic photos, extensive notes, and 140-page book.

Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet

When doctors diagnosed 19-year-old rock star Jason Becker with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, they said he would never make music again and that he wouldn’t live to see his 25th birthday. 22 years later, Jason is alive.

You’re Not You

A drama centered on a classical pianist who has been diagnosed with ALS and the brash college student who becomes her caregiver.

The Theory of Everything

Starring Eddie Redmayne (Les Misérables) and Felicity Jones (Like Crazy), this is the extraordinary story of one of the world’s greatest living minds, the renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who falls deeply in love with fellow Cambridge student Jane Wilde.

Once a healthy, active young man, Hawking received an earth-shattering diagnosis at 21 years of age. With Jane fighting tirelessly by his side, Stephen embarks on his most ambitious scientific work, studying the very thing he now has precious little of – time. Together, they defy impossible odds, breaking new ground in medicine and science, and achieving more than they could ever have dreamed.

TransFatty Lives

At 30, Patrick O’Brien was TransFatty: NYC DJ, internet personality, and filmmaker. Then he was diagnosed with ALS (a.k.a. Lou Gehrig’s Disease). Given 2 to 5 years to live, Patrick braves the unthinkable and turns his camera onto himself. Forcefully lacking self-pity, he captures the emotion, humor, and absurdity of real life as he makes art, gets political, falls in love, and fathers a son.

Indestructible

Diagnosed with ALS, a fatal neurodegenerative disease, 31 year-old Ben Byer begins documenting his life on camera. What begins as a series of video diaries grows into a three-year journey as he searches for answers, and maybe even a cure.

Joined by his childhood friend Roko Belic (Academy Award nominee, Genghis Blues) as his cameraman, Ben takes the audience on a daring first-person ride through the world of ALS. As he meets with medical experts and other ALS sufferers, Ben reveals a hidden world in which people struggle to stand, to speak, and to remain alive as they await the breakthrough that might save them. In China, Ben meets the inventor of an herbal compound that may prolong his life, an All-American weightlifter with ALS trying to cure himself through Tai Chi and acupuncture, fortune-tellers, monks and many others. When he discovers a radical fetal-cell transplant procedure in Beijing, Ben must decide if the operation s potential to restore his body outweighs its danger.

At once an impassioned cry for change and an artistic triumph from a filmmaker persevering against the odds, Indestructible delivers a universal message about the necessity of hope and the tragic joy of being alive.

Not Going Quietly

Ady Barkan’s life is upended when he is diagnosed with ALS, but a confrontation with a powerful senator catapults him to national fame and ignites a once-in-a-generation political movement.

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